John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This brings me to another point. I am shocked by the lack of information being provided. In regard to the questions on the management of schemes, which were reasonable, I ask that we get the information requested, including information from CIE, at the earliest opportunity. This needs to be resolved and some sort of audit will have to be conducted into the expenditure of €76 million of taxpayers' money on that scheme.

Ms O'Donoghue related this €76 million, the €5 million what was written off and the other fraud and errors in the Department to the overall spend of €20.7 billion and represented it as a low percentage. I do not see it that way. I see it in the context of a huge amount of money going to waste in the Department. By and large that money is poorly accounted for. I do not relate it to overall expenditure. I made the presumption that the Department has sufficient checks and balances to minimise the problem. I do not minimise the amount by relating it to the greater figure because it is taxpayers' money and we should be concerned about every red cent. That does not seem to be the case, however. I find the level of fraud to be too high and the debts to the Department in the more than five years category amount to a substantial sum. There should be a greater level management of these sums because it was the same story last year.

The Department put some sort of spin on these figures as if they are not bankable figures and it can save in excess of €700 million in fraud and money which would have gone to benefits recipients had the Department not found the fraud. I prefer to investigate the bankable sum of what they took from the State, which was illegal, or the errors which should not have happened in the first place. They should be minimised but there is not sufficient concentration on them.